Despite having influenced a whole generation of major directors, from Takashi Miike and John Woo to Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch, Seijun Suzuki has remained a relatively unknown name in the West. While some of his followers have overused and even formulised the stylised violence, mischievous humour and fetishistic attention to detail that he introduced, Suzuki’s own films still look as alien and fresh as they did at the time they were made.
Feature by Virginie Sélavy

This is one of the early B-movies that Seijun Suzuki made for Nikkatsu studios before he found his stylistic feet with Youth of the Beast in 1963. A rebellious youth tale, it portrays the head-on collision between traditional and modern Japan as young orphan Sadao is revealed to be the long-lost heir to the respectable Matsudaira clan.
Review by Virginie Sélavy

Quentin Tarantino’s main gift to the world of cinema in the last year or two was the wretched Hostel, of which the best I can say is that it spared me any nagging ambivalence by marrying political ineptitude with perfect aesthetic nullity. I mention this at the head of a review of Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill because, when he is not frittering away his credit by endorsing incompetent horror flicks, Tarantino is re-building his stock by referencing cult classics whose relative unavailability safeguards him from embarrassing comparisons. Until now…
Review by Stephen Thomson